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Years ago, there used to be a patch in the backyard that was a lot more tidy than the rest of it. A little corner tucked away in the corner, part in the shade and part in the sun. Stiles remembers it, after all, he spent a lot of time in there poking at the soil and digging out little worms, pulling out weeds and pouring water over the plants that were meant to be there.
His mother's little herb garden, with a small stone hill in the center and a circle of bigger ones surrounding it to keep most of the grass away. She'd been tending to it for years, since way before Stiles was born. Mint, rosemary, basil, and others he couldn't name then and doesn't remember now.
"To have fresh ones in the kitchen," she used to say.
Stiles didn't always believe her, especially not when he realized that sometimes the herbs went missing and they weren't used in meals that she'd made around that time. Sometimes she'd use them for tea -- the ones appropriate for it -- when anyone around was ill. Other times he'd find pieces in the trash, cut off stems like she'd been using them for something, though he never figured out what.
It's easier to guess now. Or really, he doesn't need to because he knows. Because he has his own herb garden, bigger and more elaborate than hers ever was. It's right behind the new house, the one in the Preserve closer to town than where the old Hale house used to be. It makes sense that way, the pack is closer to the rest of the town than Derek's family was, for the simple reason that half of the pack now is human or at least not born wolves.
"How are the herbs growing?" Derek asks when Stiles walks in through the back door, finding himself in the kitchen.
"They're great," Stiles tells him, sitting down at the big table in the adjacent dining room. "We'll be able to use some of them soon."
"And the wolfsbane?"
Stiles sighs. He has a patch of it away from the herbs -- even a little cross-contamination can be dangerous -- but it's been behaving a lot less nice than the other plants.
"It's fighting me," he says, huffing with annoyance.
"Maybe you need to give it space," Derek says, walking over with two plates of leftovers. "Sometimes it's best to leave things be and let them grow."
"That's... oddly poetic."
"It's true. Mom used to grow some, even experimented like you're doing," Derek tells Stiles, eyes turned to his plate. "Wolfsbane is not fun for us, but she had this notion that she can find a strain that will be good."
"I'm guessing she didn't find one," Stiles says with disappointment.
Derek shakes his head.
Derek shakes his head.
"She gave up at one point though," Derek remembers, a fond and melancholy smile on his lips. "Marched into the house with resignation and declared that she'd mow it all down the next day just to stop it growing where she didn't want it to."
"What happened?" Stiles asks, because he's pretty sure that it wasn't what Talia intended.
"There was some drama around that time, I can't remember if it was Laura getting into trouble or a full moon," Derek says, forehead scrunched as he tries to bring back the memories. "But she didn't get back to the garden for over a week. When she finally got a chance to check on it, apparently the wolfsbane found it's spot and stopped expanding into the patches with all the other herbs."
"So you're saying I should let it go?"
"Give it a week. Leave it be. If it's not better by then, we'll cut it all down and plant something else," Derek suggests. "Maybe not anything edible unless we completely change the soil."
"Well, seeing as the goal is not to poison the werewolves in my life--" Stiles yelps when Derek tugs him closer, then leans into him and smiles. "Okay."
"Really? I expected more of a fight," Derek tells him, clearly both amused and pleased.
"I can, if you want me to," Stiles says, smirking in return. Then his face drops. "Really though, I'm tired of trying to fight it. It's clearly something that has a mind of its own and I'm probably better off just letting it do its thing."
"Kind of like it's usually better to leave you to do whatever you're doing, because in the end it has a point?"
"Laugh it up, fuzzbutt," Stiles responds to the chuckle accompanying Derek's question. "We'll see if you're still laughing when I'm testing the effects of the different strains."
Derek huffs, but it's without heat or annoyance. Stiles knows by now that Derek's always going to be the one who volunteers, unless he absolutely doesn't meet the criteria of the wolfsbane's target. Those are usually just "werewolf", so Stiles doesn't even bother asking anyone else, with the exception of needing more than one test.
"Right, I'm gonna go wash up properly," he says, pulling away from Derek. "I'm not really in the mood to eat soil. It's bad enough that I spent hours breathing it in."
"You love it."
"I do. And I love you, fuzzy butt and all," Stiles shoots back and then dashes into the bathroom before Derek can retaliate.
Apparently Derek can wait for his revenge though and Stiles doesn't even get a snarky comment in return. Not this time, anyway. He just gets a pair of werewolf arms pulling him onto the couch, handing him his dinner and turning on the movie that's been set up. It's the perfect quiet evening that makes him forget all about the growing pains with his garden.